New & Noteworthy
Hartford Foundation Submits Testimony on Legislation to Develop a Ten-year Plan To Eradicate Concentrated Poverty
On Wednesday, April 16, the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving submitted written testimony on Senate Bill 1555, An Act Concerning The Ten-year Plan To Eradicate Concentrated Poverty In Participating Concentrated Poverty Census Tracts. The foundation applauds the legislature’s efforts to develop a comprehensive, long-term plan to address concentrated poverty in Connecticut through the Office of Neighborhood Investment and Community Engagement.
This work was launched with the passage of legislation last year calling for the plan and establishing the Office of Neighborhood Investment and Community Engagement (ONICD) within the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) to oversee implementation. We appreciate the enacted legislation begins with a declaration capturing the impact on residents in communities where there are areas of concentrated poverty—the “persistent disadvantages across generations by lowering the quality of educational and employment opportunities, limiting health care access and diminishing health outcomes, increasing exposure to crime, reducing available choices for affordable and properly maintained housing, and imposing obstacles to wealth building and economic mobility.” These longstanding challenges require the long-term, determined efforts underway to develop and implement a ten-year plan to eradicate concentrated poverty in Connecticut.
We also applaud the ongoing work on the pilot to implement provisions of the plan and the substantial bond funding to support capital projects, workforce development programs, housing development, community and neighborhood improvements, and education initiatives to expand opportunities for residents in participating concentrated poverty census tracts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 27 percent of Hartford residents, who are predominantly Black or Latine, live below the federal poverty level and the city’s median household income is well below the state median. According to Data Haven’s Hartford Equity Report, nearly 54 percent of Hartford households cost burdened.
Research also has documented substandard housing in Hartford neighborhoods. Data from a 2024 parcel survey from the City of Hartford and Trinity College identified about 240 structures in Hartford that are in poor condition or severely dilapidated, with the greatest concentration in the Northeast neighborhood, followed by the Upper Albany, Clay Arsenal, Asylum Hill, Frog Hollow, and Barry Square neighborhoods.
We also know that Hartford has an aged housing stock which is correlated with poorer housing quality and health outcomes. Seventy-seven percent Hartford’s housing was built before 1970. Given the high cost to maintain and upgrade aging housing, necessary repairs often go unaddressed over time, particularly for low-income or aging residents. This aging housing stock paired with Hartford’s weak real estate market and high poverty levels have contributed to the vacancy or abandonment of about five percent of all properties in the city. Blighted properties can decrease property values of adjacent properties, decrease property tax revenue, attract illegal activity, and create health and safety hazards.
The housing quality issues in Hartford also partially stem from a concentration of income restricted housing in the city. The capital city has the highest rates of affordable housing units in the state at nearly 40 percent, while exclusionary zoning in suburban and rural communities restricts resident choice in where to live. Twenty-one towns in our 29-town funding region have less than ten percent of affordable housing in total housing stock, violating Connecticut law to set flat affordable housing rate goals for all municipalities across the state.
Since 1925, the Hartford Foundation has proudly served as the community foundation for the 29-town Greater Hartford region. This year, the foundation celebrates 100 years of service and remains committed to building an even greater Hartford region. Over the past two years, we have distributed more than $100 million in grants to promote equitable opportunity for all residents in our region. Made possible by the gifts of generous individuals, families and organizations, the foundation focuses on Black and Latine residents’ quality of life. Investments supports efforts to increase the number of thriving Greater Hartford neighborhoods, with an emphasis on promoting quality of life within Hartford’s neighborhoods.
The foundation’s Thriving Neighborhoods grantmaking strategy seeks to leverage the strengths and assets of residents to empower community-driven agency and advocacy for social and economic development. Grants aim to empower Black, Latine, and other marginalized communities in the region by increasing stable housing opportunities, preserving and developing community assets, fostering small business growth, and strengthening social connections.
Given these interrelated issues, as the plan is implemented, it is important to continue to support immediate interventions as well as to examine systemic challenges that are driving housing and other factors contributing to community instability in Connecticut. Fundamentally, we want Hartford and other neighborhoods across the Greater Hartford region to have housing, education, employment opportunities and other services that allow community residents to thrive.
In December, the foundation awarded a grant to LISC Connecticut to create a more inclusive community development sector in the Greater Hartford region. LISC pools financial resources to provide low-cost capital to nonprofit developers to build and preserve affordable rental units and create homeownership opportunities, offering pre-development financing, bridge loans, lines of credit for community development entities and acting as an intermediary, managing the lending of other partners.
The grant includes operating support for three nonprofit community development corporations, which together serve almost all of Hartford’s neighborhoods including Mutual Housing Association of Greater Hartford, Northside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance (NINA), and Sheldon Oak Central. Through technical assistance and capacity grants, LISC strengthens these organizations to better manage quality affordable housing and carry out comprehensive community development efforts. Through the collaborative, LISC convenes all nonprofit developers in Hartford each quarter to share best practices, hear from key stakeholders, and align advocacy work. LISC also provides technical assistance to suburban communities on affordable housing, including several in the Foundation’s region.
In 2022, the Hartford Foundation awarded a grant to the Hartford Community Loan Fund (HCLF) to support its efforts to provide access to credit and technical assistance to facilitate the purchase and rehabilitation of blighted residential and mixed-use properties in Hartford and throughout other low-wealth communities across the state of Connecticut.
HCLF also brings financial products and services to benefit the low wealth residents of Hartford in various ways, through HCLF or other partners. These have included efforts to increase the availability of financial coaching/counseling in Hartford, the LISC Financial Opportunity Center model; support residents seeking to increase access to healthy and affordable foods and health-promoting services; and increase the availability of affordable housing stock in higher opportunity neighborhoods outside Connecticut's largest cities.
The foundation has also supported Hartford’s San Juan Center which works to provide essential public services, including educational and employment programs (e.g., programs focused on computer literacy training), an information and referral service that help people find solutions to various health, housing, human service and crisis counseling needs. The San Juan Center has also built and manages both a 36-unit Senior Housing Complex on Belden St. and a Thrift Store on Main Street, which address the most basic needs of the community. In 2022, the foundation awarded a three-year grant to the San Juan Center to support inclusive housing and community development in Hartford. The grant provided flexible capital support towards housing and community development projects and to augment the organization’s real estate development capacity.
Organizations such as these are leading efforts in Hartford to respond to the challenges of concentrated poverty by offering a broad range of services and supports to increase people’s access to quality affordable housing, education and workforce development programs, access to credit and financial support and other services crucial to stabilizing neighborhoods and building family and community wealth.
The foundation supports Senate Bill 1555’s proposed expansion of the agencies working on the development of the ten-year plan to eliminate concentrated poverty including the Department of Economic Community Development, Department of Housing, and the Office of Workforce Strategy, and regional workforce development boards. We also support the legislation’s requirement for additional reporting from the Department of Economic and Community Development. As the issues surrounding concentrated poverty are wide-ranging and will require a broad array of solutions, it is vital that the agencies working to develop the plan cover interrelated issues such as housing, workforce development, education, social services, health care and others. The agencies are already collaborating on these issues, and it is important to build on existing efforts.
The foundation also appreciates the bill’s requirement that state agencies prioritize projects included in the ten-year plan for grants and funding. Input and engagement from policymakers is crucial, and it is equally important that plans continue to be informed by neighborhood organizations and residents in communities to hear the challenges and opportunities they see and their perspectives on strategies that work to address them. The foundation has learned from its own investments that no plan to eliminate concentrated poverty will be successful without input and buy-in from the people and communities a plan is intended to support.
We welcome the opportunity to continue partnering with legislators, the administration, advocates, philanthropy and other stakeholders to ensure that all of Connecticut neighborhoods offer opportunities for residents to live happy, healthy, successful lives and contribute to the state’s economy.